


Anaesthesia

by MicrosuedeMouse



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Confessions, F/M, Kissing, and keeping Napoleon entertained, drugs making Illya honest, some non-explicit description of gunshot wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 12:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13166526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MicrosuedeMouse/pseuds/MicrosuedeMouse
Summary: Illya is pumped full of anaesthesia after receiving emergency surgery from a disreputable doctor in South Africa, and it's making him a little more straightforward and affectionate than usual. Napoleon is greatly amused, and Gaby is mostly just concerned.





	Anaesthesia

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this back in like August I think, but I've finally cleaned it up for posting. I'm trying to post as many of this year's WIPs as I can before the new year, so maybe you'll see even more from me, who can say!

Gaby and Napoleon sat, fidgeting and quiet, on opposite sides of the small waiting room. Napoleon was flipping through long-outdated magazines, not bothering to read anything; Gaby wasn’t sure if he knew any Afrikaans anyway. She, herself, was turning Illya’s watch over and over in her hands. She had grabbed it on impulse, worried that in such a tiny (and admittedly disreputable) clinic it might go missing if left amongst his other personal effects. She had spent the first hour or so with the old magazines and beaten-up coffee table books as well, but her mind was much too busy to stay occupied with only pictures and unreadable text.

She knew he was worried, and he knew that she was, too. But they seemed to have made an unspoken agreement that if neither of them acknowledged any anxiety, it didn’t exist. Because everything was going to be _fine_. There was nothing to be worried _about_.

They had been sitting there for uncounted hours – lifetimes, they would both have argued – when the door finally opened and an ugly older man emerged, pulling off a surgical mask to reveal a deep-set natural frown. “Dr. Smit,” Gaby greeted, unable to stop herself from jumping to her feet. The ‘Dr.’ was a formality – Smit had been stripped of his right to practice medicine years ago, which was no comfort, but in dire straits they’d take what they could get.

“He is awake,” Smit told them in a flat, heavily-accented voice, hoarse from many years of tobacco use. “You must remove him. I have another procedure in an hour.”

“Of course,” Napoleon said quickly. “Gaby, get the car. I’ll bring him out.”

She nodded, rushing outside. The heavy off-road car was, blessedly, precisely where they’d left it, and she pulled it up to the doors of the little building. She hopped out again to open the passenger-side door when Napoleon emerged with Illya slung around his shoulder. The American was nearly doubled over with the effort. “How is he?” Gaby asked, an anxious edge creeping into her voice, betraying her.

“Awake was an exaggeration on Smit’s part,” Napoleon grunted back as she helped him shove their barely-conscious colleague into the passenger seat. “But I suppose we should be grateful they had access to any anesthesia at all. The whole process would have been _much_ more difficult for everyone without.” He sighed with relief when Illya’s weight was off of him, leaning back and rolling his shoulders.

“We best get him back into his bed, then,” Gaby stated, rounding the car and climbing back into the driver’s seat. Napoleon hopped into the back and they set off, Illya slumped forward against the seatbelt with his eyes just barely open.

Gaby forced herself not to look at him, to keep her eyes on the dirt road ahead of her. When she looked at him, all she saw were the bullet holes peppering the right shoulder of his jacket, still stained with blood, only hours old. She’d seen him injured before, but not like this. It was more than she cared for.

The ride back to their safe house was nearly an hour long and thick with discomfort. Napoleon and Gaby both were tense with concern for Illya’s healing, and Gaby winced every time she carefully negotiated the car over rough terrain, jostling him as little as possible. After an interminably long journey – an interminably long day, really – they finally pulled up to their remote little cabin. Gaby parked as close as she could get to the door, and she and Napoleon worked together to haul a still-incapacitated Illya inside, dumping him unceremoniously on the big bed in the corner.

Gaby worried over him for a few minutes, carefully giving him a drink of water – just slowly pouring it into his mouth, really – and wrangling him out of the bloodied clothes. She tried to get a fresh shirt onto his prone form, but it was a useless exercise. Eventually Napoleon crossed the cabin’s single room and put his hand on her shoulder. “You need rest, too, Gaby,” he said quietly.

“No less than you do,” she argued, hiding her concern under a veil of exhausted impatience.

He shook his head. “I dozed in the car, and in that waiting room earlier.” He took her more firmly by the shoulders now, steering her towards the single flattened couch that faced away from the bed, with a view of the front of the cabin. “I’ll keep an eye on him for a while. Please, get a little sleep while you can. I promise I’ll wake you if anything changes,” he added, anticipating her objections.

She glared at him for a moment. “Fine,” she snapped. Glad for the comfortable work clothes she’d been able to wear for this job, she stretched out on the sofa with a huff, pulling a threadbare blanket over herself. Despite her nerves (or because of them), she was incredibly tired, and fell quickly asleep as Napoleon settled himself in a chair next to Illya’s bed, book in hand.

 

Gaby woke, no idea of the time, to a heavy thump and a groan. She jumped to her feet only to discover Illya sitting himself up on the floor, a drowsy Napoleon coming to in the chair next to him. “Illya!” she admonished. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Falling,” he answered slowly, shaking his head. He looked up at her and then broke into an uncharacteristically large smile. “Was hungry. Trying not to wake you, and Cowboy.”

“Back into bed,” she told him, gripping his bare arm and helping Napoleon heave the giant back onto the mattress. “I’ll get you some food.”

Illya nodded pleasantly, sitting up against the headboard. As Gaby busied herself going through their limited rations, she heard him ask Napoleon belatedly, “When did we get back?”

“It’s been a few hours,” Napoleon answered. “But you spent half a day before that unconscious, between the blood loss and the surgery.”

Illya nodded again, taking a few moments to process this. Then, one hand wandering sluggishly to the opposite shoulder, he stated, “I was shot.” His fingertip skimmed over several sets of fresh stitches.

“Several times. You’re in remarkably good shape, all things considered,” Napoleon told him.

Gaby returned with a glass of water and a simple sandwich. “I thought it would take more to put you out of service,” she teased him, masking her worry yet again.

“It does,” Illya answered, still smiling at her. He drank the water she gave him, then turned to the sandwich in his lap. “I will be fine.”

“We’re going to have to keep a close eye on those wounds, though,” she said. He shrugged, then winced.

Illya watched with mild interest as his fingers failed to grasp the sandwich as anticipated. “I think,” he said slowly, “they gave me wrong dosage of anesthesia.”

“That does seem possible,” Napoleon agreed. “You’re having more trouble than I would have expected. But, as I said to our associate here earlier, we’re lucky they had the drugs at all.”

“Mm,” Illya agreed, finally getting the sandwich to his mouth as Gaby perched on the edge of the bed beside him. While he ate, Gaby turned and inspected their third partner’s face. There were bags under his eyes. He’d dozed off at Illya’s bedside, but clearly that hadn’t been enough.

“Solo,” she said, reaching out to tap his knee. “Your turn to get some sleep, I think.”

He made out to argue, then caught the sharp look she was giving him and wisely amended his strategy. “I’ll go in a few minutes, once we’re sure our friend here is all right,” he promised reluctantly. “If you’re sure you’ve gotten enough rest, yourself.”

“I feel quite refreshed,” she assured him, her tone a warning. He nodded curtly, understanding that he didn’t have much choice.

Illya – whose appetite matched his size, weak fingers or no – finished his sandwich in short order and then looked up to his partners. “Neither of you are hurt?” he asked, expression suddenly full of concern.

“We’re fine,” Napoleon told him. “A few scrapes and bruises, not to mention putting our backs out hauling _you_ around, Peril, but no blood spilled. You did enough of that for all of us.”

Illya smiled again, relieved. “I have most blood to spare. You are both so small.” Napoleon, unaccustomed to being described as ‘small’ – and really only a man the size of Illya could get away with it – raised his eyebrows, but said nothing, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“How are you feeling?” Gaby asked, touching one of Illya’s forearms. “You _did_ lose a lot of blood.”

“Oh, I am fine,” he assured her with a lazy wave of the hand. “Heal quickly. Do not worry for me, little chop shop girl.”

Gaby – incensed despite her attempts to hide her concern – sat up straighter, fixing him with a scowl. “I’ll worry as much as I like, about whatever and whomever I like,” she told him stubbornly.

“Okay,” he answered, smiling further and leaning his head back against the wall, eyes closed. “I will not argue with beautiful little woman.”

Surprised and covering it up with irritation, Gaby picked up his clean plate and glass and took them away. “The drugs have made him delirious, I see,” she commented.

Napoleon smiled, entertained now. “No, only loose-lipped,” he told her.

She tossed him a dirty look as she put the dishes in the sink and then headed back; Napoleon’s grin only widened. Illya, though, who missed their silent exchange with his eyes shut, said, “Cowboy is right. I am only honest, Gaby.”

She sighed shortly, putting her hands on her hips and facing her highly amused American colleague. “All right. Time for you to sleep,” she told him, taking the book from his hands, marking his page, and putting it aside. Then she took him by the wrists and yanked him out of the chair with not-inconsiderable strength for such a tiny body. Amused, Napoleon let her pull him across the room and push him onto the sofa. She tossed the blanket over his legs, gave him a stern look, and then went to take over his chair at Illya’s bedside.

“You should sleep, too,” she told Illya softly. “You’ll need rest to heal.”

He lifted his head again, opening his eyes and still smiling that unusually large smile. “How can I sleep with such beautiful company?”

Gaby, ignoring both the rising heat in her cheeks and the unconcealed laughter from the couch, frowned. “You need rest,” she told him again, as if repetition would make him cooperate. “And fluids. You lost a lot of blood, Illya.”

Nodding again, he said, “ _Da_. I should have more water.” He began to push himself off the mattress again, apparently having forgotten what had happened the last time, and Gaby quickly got to her feet and planted both hands on his bare chest, pushing him down again.

“I will get it,” she told him.

She returned with another full glass, sitting next to him as she handed it to him, and once again he downed it quickly. She put the glass aside, next to Napoleon’s book, her eyes fixed on the stitches on his shoulder. “Do they hurt?” she asked softly. She had been grazed a few times, but so far had managed to avoid being shot. The idea of having to have bullets removed from her muscles and the wounds closed up again made her shudder.

“Not very much,” he answered, following her gaze. He reached a finger up and brushed the spots again – five individual wounds, held tight with a few stitches each. “I have had worse.”

“Really?” she asked. In six months of active spy work, she’d suffered her fair share of injuries, but bruised ribs and broken toes were the worst she had experienced so far. She was lucky, she knew that. But she was also good – and so were her colleagues. There was that to credit, too, for her good fortune.

He nodded. “Yes. I was shot here, once.” His fingers traced their way down to his abdomen, down and to his left, just above his waistband. She followed and saw the faint scar, faded over time, and briefly was distracted by the dismaying thought of how long he’d been doing this job. “Had kidney removed. Took long time to heal. Very painful.”

Gaby drew her feet up onto the bed, hugging her legs. “How many times have you been shot?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“Too many,” was his first answer. Then he glanced up and met her eye, saw the way her eyebrows knitted, and said, “I have been lucky. Always recovered.” Then, upon her frown, he sighed and answered, “Nine, including all of these.” He touched his shoulder again. “This man was trigger happy.”

She nodded. “I shot him in both kneecaps.”

Illya’s eyes shone, and he smiled like there was nothing more beautiful she could have said to him. “Very painful,” he told her proudly. Then, as if it had only just occurred to him for the first time, he asked, “What about mission?”

She shrugged. “You were the priority. We’ll take a day to regroup. Solo has some ideas, and he’s going to go into the city tomorrow to call Waverly.”

“I am sorry to ruin plan,” he said apologetically.

“This wasn’t your fault,” she told him firmly. “None of us anticipated that many men. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“I am lucky for such lovely company,” he answered with another smile, and Gaby was forced to admit that Napoleon had been right – Illya wasn’t delirious. He could carry a conversation. But under the influence of the anesthesia he couldn’t help saying everything that came to mind.

Her attention was caught once again by the stitches on his shoulder. “Ah, you are leaking,” she said softly. She got up to fetch a clean cotton rag and the first aid kit, then climbed back onto the bed and around his legs to get closer to his shoulder. She reached up carefully to dab at the fluid seeping out of the wound. Illya watched her in silence, letting her work away. Once he was cleaned up, she retrieved a cotton pad from the kit and taped it carefully over the stitches. “Try not to move your shoulder too much,” she reminded him, though she knew he knew. “We’ll take this off and clean it again later.”

“Thank you,” he said with a nod, and she didn’t meet his eye. When she was finished with the tape, she didn’t quite remove her hands, instead letting one of them skim lightly down his muscled chest to his abdomen.

After too long a silence spent staring at his torso – and him staring at the top of her head – she whispered, “There are so many scars, up this close.”

“I have been spy for long time,” he answered quietly. “I hope you do not ever have so many. Would be shame to mark such beauty.”

Finally she glanced up at him, finding herself at close quarters. Ever so briefly, it crossed her mind the kinds of things that had usually happened when they were this near to each other in the past. She hadn’t heard anything but even breathing from the couch in several minutes, so what could interrupt them this time? “I don’t know,” she said, in spite of herself. “I don’t think it’s done any harm to your good looks.” Illya’s uninhibited smile was so broad and open that it was disarming. It was enough to make Gaby look away for a moment, and when she shifted where she sat, she felt a weight in her pocket. “Oh! I nearly forgot,” she said, pulling out his watch. “I kept this for you when you went into surgery. I didn’t want to risk anything happening to it…”

He took the watch gently from her hand, his eyes suddenly watery. “Thank you, Gaby,” he said, wrapping his fingers around the timepiece almost as if he was embracing it. She knew that he was already stripped bare, and she knew the watch was important to him, but seeing such raw emotion on his face was rare and strange and oddly moving. Illya looked away from her long enough to swipe the pad of his thumb over the watch face before moving to put it back on, but he only fumbled with the clasp, unable to quite make it work. After a couple seconds, she reached over and helped him put it on, and he looked back up at her in unmasked awe as her fingers hovered around his wrist.

He sighed something fondly in Russian, and despite her months of lessons, she couldn’t pick anything recognizable out of it. The language remained strange and complicated to her, though she’d thought she’d been doing fairly well so far. “What was that?” she whispered back, hyperaware of her hand still on his.

His right hand came up to trace her jawline and cup her cheek gently, and in the back of her head a small voice admonished him for moving his shoulder so soon after she’d told him not to, but she kept that inside. “It means,” he said slowly, and she thought her heart might stop. “That you are miracle I never thought would happen, little chop shop girl. Never thought _could_ happen – did not even believe in.”

Gaby’s heart clenched. “And what do you mean by that, hm?” she asked, refusing to believe it until he said it plainly. In spite of all the evidence, she needed this closed-off Russian giant to be clear with her in order to really trust what her instincts had known about him all along.

“I mean I have never had to pretend, when cover requires me to be madly in love with you,” he told her, his smile reaching his eyes in a way she’d never seen it do before. “I do not at all deserve woman such as you, and yet here you are, always having my back.”

“Illya,” she said, very softly. And then he pulled her into him, one hand still on her face and the other falling onto her hip as he kissed her. Kneeling over him, she had to brace both hands against his chest to hold herself up, but he barely seemed to register the weight.

The first kiss was sweet and chaste and so long awaited. The second was different – deep and wanting and filled with a tension that had existed unspoken between them since almost the day they had met. Fleetingly it crossed Gaby’s mind that he was drugged, he wasn’t himself right now, but then she thought about how half the times they’d come close to this she’d been drunk and that didn’t mean she hadn’t meant it, and then she threw one leg across his hips so that she could draw closer, straddle him, slide one hand over his neck up into his hair and the other down to appreciate the solid mass of muscle beneath her. He hummed, smiling against her lips, and the hand on her cheek pushed back, fingers weaving into her hair and pulling her close, the other pressing against the small of her back.

They were allowed to enjoy a few minutes of blissful closeness before Napoleon said, “Well done, you two. Taken long enough, haven’t you?”

The two of them parted, and Gaby twisted to shoot him a hard look. “Solo,” she said sharply, at the same time that Illya said, “Cowboy,” sounding rather more resigned. The American was sitting up, watching them over the back of the couch with a grin so wide and self-satisfied it looked like his face might come apart.

“All right, all right. I’ll get some sleep now, I promise,” Napoleon said with a wave of his hand, intentionally misinterpreting Gaby’s irritation. “You should consider doing the same, you know.” He disappeared, laying back down.

Gaby turned to face Illya again, softening and laying against him a little. “He’s right, you know,” she pointed out. “You still need rest.”

“I don’t want to rest,” he told her, his smile enormous. “I want to be with you.”

She couldn’t help smiling in return. “I know,” she said, dismounting from his lap and picking up the first aid kit and rag to put them away. Then she returned to the bed and pushed on his shoulders until he obligingly sank down into the bed. “But I will be right here when you wake, okay?” She nudged his side until he scooted over a bit, then laid down alongside him, resting her head on his good shoulder and letting him scoop his arm around her back. “I could use some more sleep, too.”

“Well, all right,” he agreed, still disproportionately happy. He pulled her close and tucked her head under his chin. “Sleep well, little chop shop girl.”

 

Illya’s head was swimming when he woke, but he quickly became aware of the weight – not to mention heat – of the tiny woman nestled into his side. Alarmed, he sat up as carefully as he could, working hard not to wake her, and then climbed over her off the bed. Grasping for his memories, he crossed the room to step outside for a few lungfuls of fresh nighttime air.

Napoleon was leaning on the outside wall next to the door, sipping local rum from a crystal tumbler under the light of a buzzing bug zapper. He greeted his partner with a look of amusement. “Why hello, Russian Romeo,” he said. “How do you feel?”

Illya ran a hand down his face. “Little fuzzy,” he answered slowly. “I… I kissed Gaby,” he added, a shade of dismay in his tone.

“Quite a bit,” Napoleon confirmed. “Accompanied by a rather moving confession of love. Really, it was quite something. I’m a changed man just from witnessing it.”

Illya tossed him a very dirty look even as he struggled to accept the memories that flooded back into him. Muttering something deeply impolite in his mother language, he looked up to the sky and wondered if there was any possible way to recover his situation.

The two men stood in silence for several minutes – one full of dread, the other terribly amused – watching the stars and wondering what came next. The silence was broken when the door of the cabin opened again and the last member of their trio emerged into the night. She turned to face Illya, who quickly looked away, heart pounding in his chest with a fear he never felt in the face of even his deadliest enemies.

“Illya?” she asked, fingers brushing his arm, and he stiffened. There was a long pause, and then he heard her say, “Solo.”

“I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes, shall I?” their partner answered, tone still full of amusement. There was the sound of the door opening and closing again, and then Illya was left alone with her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him quietly.

“Nothing,” he answered, too quickly. He was still wracking his brain for a solution to this. He felt her tiny hand on his shoulder, and while he could easily have stayed immovable, his will wasn’t strong enough to stop her from turning him to face her again.

“Are you embarrassed?” Gaby asked, perceptive and straightforward as always. “Of what you said earlier, while still drugged from your surgery?”

He licked his lips, mouth dry. Yes, he supposed, one might say he was embarrassed. Or, in fact, horrified. But how could he answer her here, now?

“What you said was lovely,” she told him, since he still wasn’t responding. “I know you wouldn’t normally have said it, but I thought it was beautiful.”

“I… it was not supposed to happen,” he answered stiltedly. “I did not mean to tell you those things.”

She stepped a little closer to him, looking up into his face with narrowed eyes. “I am glad you did,” she said.

“Yes, but… I was not in control of myself,” he said, still struggling.

“You are too attached to control,” she informed him.

He stared down at this tiny woman whose hands were so firmly wrapped around his heart, who had all six and a half feet of him completely at her mercy. How could he tell her that he hadn’t expressed himself fully earlier – that he was absolutely at her beck and call, that he’d travel to the ends of the earth for her, that he positively worshipped her? That he belonged to her, entirely, heart and soul?

“Illya, tell me what you’re thinking,” she urged him softly, and staring into her beautiful brown eyes, his resolve melted.

“I never… I could not…” He paused, groping desperately for the words. He couldn’t find them any better in Russian than he could in English. “You are… you are so strong, so beautiful. So… so _much_.” He gestured with his hands, unable to express himself verbally. “I did not know I could fall in love, did not know love was real. And so _powerful_. I… I am _devoted_ to you, Gaby. I do not want just to kiss you or to hold you. I want to breathe for you, live for you. Would die for you. You are centre of universe, of all of my thoughts.” He swallowed hard. “I am consumed by you. I could disappear into you. I feel everything so much, Gaby, but I have never felt anything as much as I feel _you_. I am– I am not good man. I am dangerous. I could not ever deserve to love you like this.”

Gaby seemed to have heard enough, standing on her toes and reaching high to grasp his neck and drag him down to kiss her again, hard. In spite of himself, Illya was overwhelmed, taking her face between his hands and kissing her back with everything he had.

“Illya,” Gaby breathed when they parted, only by centimetres. “You are a good man, an outstanding man. I would have to be a blind fool not to see that, and not to be in love with you, as well. No one could deserve me, if not you.”

Illya felt the hot sting of tears behind his eyes, tears that for the first time in years had nothing to do with rage or pain. “Gaby, I… I do not know if you understand…”

“I understand,” she said, and there was an air of finality to it that he knew meant she would accept no further argument. “I love you too, Illya, so stop worrying and kiss me again.”

He did as he was told.


End file.
